Amphus Centralizes Server Provisioning and ManagementAmphus Inc., on Monday, will announce ManageSite Universal Edition. The server management software is designed to provision and monitor any x86-compatible servers. By providing a central interface, the software is built to eliminate what Amphus describes as "console hopping" and automate routine server management. ManageSite Universal Edition is designed to operate using either the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or RedHat Linux and supports pedestal, rack-mounted, and blade servers through a secure Web interface, according to the company.

San Jose, Calif.-based Amphus bills ManageSite as the only enterprise level software that leverages the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) for lights-out, unattended management and bare-metal provisioning for servers without an operating system. IPMI, which originated from the collaboration of Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, and NEC, defines the interfaces for system monitoring and management of intelligent hardware and has been adopted by over 150 hardware companies.

ManageSite also supports virtualization and management of groups of servers to schedule instructions and enable upgrades to these groups of servers to be boiled down to a single click without logging into individual servers. Amphus reports that thanks to a built-in SQL database engine, all the actions, performance data and alerts are logged and can be easily exported to other applications. ManageSite also supports automated discovery and unique identification of servers in a heterogeneous environment, and can handle intelligent alerts and remote power cycling.

IBM has currently been using Red Hat Enterprise v2.1 on xSeries and BladeCenter models. Enterprise Linux 3 comes in three varieties -- workstation, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprise.

The news is a boost for companies running Linux-powered IBM servers, which could ultimately translate to more processing power running on fewer servers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 can run on up to 32 processors (up from eight in 2.1) on 64 GB of memory (up from 24 GB)and has 256GB in kernel address spaces (up from 1GB).

The deal is the latest in a multi-year contract Red Hat signed with IBM last
year to provide its software pre-loaded on Big Blue's hardware. At the time of the agreement, Red Hat officials expected to see a huge increase in revenues as its sales force was essentially doubled with the inclusion of IBM's sales teams.

Leigh Day, a Red Hat spokesperson, said the arrangement  similar to
deals it has with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Fujitsu  has led to increased exposure for the open source-based software company.

"We've seen significant customer demand for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the IBM hardware platform," she said. "I think that is the impetus for IBM making (us) available on their servers."

In addition to hardware support, IBM will include software help for WebSphere, DB2, Lotus, Tivoli and Rational users.

Currently available only in North America and Japan, IBM officials said they expected to offer the deal throughout the world in the near future.

Ensim Announces Support for Fedora LinuxEnsim Corp., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based hosting automation software provider, on Monday announced its plans to support Fedora Linux in future versions of its control panel software.
Ensim reports that its products running on the Fedora Linux platform will give hosting service
providers easy access to the latest open source applications and the capability
to implement newer hardware without experiencing compatibility issues.

"We are committed to providing our customers with the latest technological advances, and Fedora Linux is no exception," said Steve Dauber, vice president
of marketing at Ensim Corporation.

Ensim said it plans to update its Ensim WEBppliance control panels to support
Fedora Linux in the January 2004 timeframe. The update will be offered free of
charge to all users of Ensim WEBppliance Pro and Ensim WEBppliance Basic.